Quotes of the Week

From the Light:
“The prime feature of political decision-making is that it's a zero-sum game. One person's gain is of necessity another person's loss. As such, political decision-making and allocation of resources is conflict enhancing while market decision-making and allocation is conflict reducing. The greater the number of decisions made in the political arena, the greater the potential for conflict.
When there's significant government allocation of resources, the most effective means of organizing for the gains are those proven most divisive, such as race, ethnicity, religion and region.”
Walter Williams

“There are two ways to deal with a poisonous snake: Avoid it, or kill it. The same is true of the state.”
Thomas L. Knapp

“The left and the right love power, and although that power is often directed against their own when the other side is at the reins, they cannot abandon the idea that a police state can be pinpointed only against those they hate, and not those with whom they sympathize. The responsible, non-partisan and indeed American thing to do is to harbor extreme skepticism toward the state when it spies, infiltrates, arrests and imprisons anyone, and most especially those whose alleged crime is “sedition” or “conspiracy” or in any way being the enemy of the state.”
Anthony Gregory

“The moral nature of a man is unchanged by the existence of an organization or his position within that organization. Organizational pursuits wherein the only real criteria for participation is desire and the threat of negative market response is non-existent – such as politics and government bureaucracy – will, given time, attract those who are both desirous of the benefits afforded by the available ways and means and motivated by the lack of negative feedback. (In other words, losers.)”
Wilt Alston

"In spite of the blame game that is played when it comes to soldiers being culpable for their actions, they are responsible and will have to answer to a higher power than their commanding officers. That higher power may be their religion, philosophy, moral code, or conscience, but unless they have made a god out of the military, it will be something."
Laurence M. Vance

“The government and government beneficiaries are lining up in anxious opposition against the much larger, much more creative and decentralized populations that existentially threaten its comfortable, profligate and power-wielding existence. This is the real reason that ragtag and broke down militias, tea partiers, entrepreneurs, raw milk drinkers and libertarian thinkers of every stripe are obsessively feared by the state, and state media.”
Karen Kwiatkowski

“The answer, ultimately, to the health care debacle, or any other point of political contention, is the death of politics itself. Voting and requesting “reform” from an institution utterly immune to any manner of functioning except in the manner it currently does (and always will, until its eventual demise), is like beseeching Dr. Josef Mengele or John Wayne Gacy to just please calm down, behave, and be a good guy. You cannot expect an inherently immoral institution to exist and operate according to certain moral standards. It’s a wholly irrational concept.”
Alex R. Knight III

“Constitutions are 'screeds' offered as justifications for unethical behavior. Don’t believe the hype.”
Tzo

“If Washington really wanted to end terrorism, it would stop bombing Moslems, who would then get bored and stop bombing us. What a concept. You saw it here first. But there’s no money in it.”
Fred Reed

“The idea that coercive government is destructive to civilization is a dangerous idea. Not because it is wrong, but because it is demonstrably right. It is dangerous to those who depend on having the appearance of legitimacy as they do things as ‘government‘, backed up by the guns of government, that they would be killed for doing individually.”
Kent McManigal

“Apparently, libertarians have been right all along by pointing out that an armed citizenry provides the best defense against common criminals and especially, criminal bands armed with national hymns, flags, fake history books, tax collectors, and a customs office.”
Juan Fernando Carpio

“Our soldiers are hardly the ‘heroes’ that our government and our media automatically refer to them all as. They are armed gangsters, sent out to enforce US hegemony over desperately poor societies, and their basic strategy is to spread fear and terror in hopes of isolating those few who dare to fight back against absurd odds from the general public. Of course, the majority of US military personnel are also victims--victims of poor education, victims of an economic system that leaves many without any opportunity other than military enlistment, victims of propaganda, and victims of recruiters' lies. But for all that they are not heroes.”
Dave Lindorff

“What is this ‘road to [economic] recovery’ nonsense? Don't these people know the world is in a prolonged deleveraging stage? Don't they know that we are unwinding from half a century of credit expansion, of living far beyond our means? Don't they know that western economies are hemorrhaging and that Band-Aid welfare fixes are temporary, at best? Don't they know that living off demand stolen from the future on a currency beaten into submission is not the kind of recovery on which to build a smile and a brighter tomorrow? Don't they know that people are cutting back?”
Joel Bowman

“As far as we can tell, the last successful government program was WWII. And that was only successful because the competitors' programs were also run by government.”
Bill Bonner

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From the Darkness:

“Look at the steam in the man’s stride! Is it just me, or does Barack Obama seem different since health care passed?”
Chris Matthews, MSNBC stooge.

“The politicians have failed. Now it’s up to us. We must break the law to make the laws we need: laws that are supposed to protect society, and protect our future. Until our laws do that, screw being climate lobbyists. Screw being climate activists. It’s not working. We need an army of climate outlaws.”
From the Greenpeace website.

“I think we have to have a credible threat of force and the preparation to use force against Iran. It would be much better if we used force against — to delay the Iranian nuclear program than if Israel did and there is no evidence that the US government is being at all serious about the use force there.”
Bill Kristol, Fox News

"This is really about helping those people out, getting them ready as far as the choice for best course of study for the financial future. So you may consider the possibility of enlisting in public service. Demand is really high right now for government jobs ...and any remaining debt on federal student loans will be forgiven after you work full-time in public service for ten years."
Stephanie Elam, CNN business news correspondent, promoting “public service.”

"While patterns may change before the start of the hurricane season, we believe current conditions warrant concern for an above-average season."
William Gray, Colorado State University, announcing his 2010 hurricane forecast [Note: The same folks predicted a busy hurricane season last year but it turned out to be the quietest season in 12 years.]

“We respect the right of freedom of expression, but forcibly entering government buildings is not an appropriate means of protest.”
State Department spokesman Philip Crowley, rebuking protesters in Thailand for storming the country's parliament saying forcing their way into government buildings." [But, of course, it’s OK for government to forcibly enter OUR buildings.]

"I don't think you can understand the Confederacy and the Civil War unless you understand slavery.”
B. Obama, showing no understanding of history.

“So inflation is an important tool in getting us out of this mess. It’s painful and unfair–those who have been responsible and saved money will pay the price for those who borrowed money, racked up huge debts, and spent more than they could afford. But it’s what the Fed is (quietly) aiming for.”
Peter Gorenstein

"No one I've met is looking for a handout.”
B. Obama

“It's time to confront the sobering fact that the entire right wing -- including the GOP establishment, which encourages, endorses, and echoes these sentiments almost every time its officials appear in public -- is now issuing nearly constant invitations to criminal sedition. They're creating a climate and using language that emboldens the handful of sociopaths in our midst who are always spoiling for a fight. They've given their newly-expanded corps of flying monkeys permission to brandish their guns in public, empowered their militias, promised them glory, and are now telling them explicitly which targets to hit.”
Sara Robinson

“Advertently or not, Mr. McDonnell (Virginia’s governor) is working in a long and dispiriting tradition. Efforts to rehabilitate the Southern rebellion frequently come at moments of racial and social stress, and it is revealing that Virginia’s neo-Confederates are refighting the Civil War in 2010. Whitewashing the war is one way for the right — alienated, anxious and angry about the president, health care reform and all manner of threats, mostly imaginary — to express its unease with the Age of Obama, disguising hate as heritage.”
Jon Meacham, Newsweek editor, babbling hysterically about the Virginia governor’s proclamation recognizing April as Confederate History Month.

“Just as radical Muslims have a warped sense of religion, Confederate supporters have a delusional view of what is honorable. The terrorists are willing to kill their own to prove their point, and the Confederates were just as willing in the Civil War to take up arms against their fellow Americans to justify their point.”
Roland S. Martin, Confused News Network